The mystery first came to light at LoJack last year, when the company was notified by some of its international licensees that some of the batteries made by EVE Energy Co. of China exhibited degraded performances that fell short of LoJack’s standards. That prompted LoJack to perform its own investigation, which is still under way. LoJack has been in discussions with EVE about its internal investigation, according to a quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week, and might need to pursue a lawsuit against EVE. LoJack has a $5 million insurance policy, but it’s unclear right now whether the insurance policy terms cover expenses related to the battery problems.

Dewsnap declined to say how many cars are affected by the problem. But he did say that the majority of LoJack units in use today are vehicle-powered, not self-powered, and as such would be unaffected by the issue.

LoJack has dropped EVE as a battery supplier. Ortiz told analysts that the company was already looking at bringing on a secondary battery source when the issue with the EVE batteries popped up. LoJack now uses FDK, a Japanese battery manufacturer. Ortiz told analysts that LoJack makes a promise to consumers and jettisoned EVE because LoJack wants to ensure it can keep that promise: “Obviously, with the critical nature of our brand positioning being, ‘We can get it back with LoJack,’ we don’t want to see any degradation in our recovery performance.”

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